


Dream a Little Dream

by ectograsp



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Multi, Other, Violence, all characters are grey, and seeing how i can make it make sense, and with the people around her, but i really want to try taking the canon ending at face value with a minor 'dany doesn't die' tweak, critical but fair of pretty much everyone, dany and sansa are going to have a lot of interesting discussions, game of thrones canon incest, i am really interested in what the potential fallout of the sacking of king's landing might be, if dany didn't die, most people seem to prefer to either ignore canon (i get it), not sure how explicit any sex will be yet but it's possible, or have her resurrected and come back to prove why canon is ultimately ridiculous (i get it), so if you can't handle your fave being criticized this is not the fic for you, what it might look like for her to come to terms with everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:48:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22428079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ectograsp/pseuds/ectograsp
Summary: Dany is not killed by Jon after the sacking of King's Landing, but taken back to Winterfell as a prisoner, where she is forced to reckon with the choices (both her own and others') that turned her from the great hope of a kingdom to its most feared monster.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark will be featured, Jonerys endgame - Relationship, however various dynamics will be explored between all three, more may be added - Relationship
Comments: 211
Kudos: 31





	1. a different door

‘Be with me. Build the new world with me.’

Jon stares into those beautiful, earnest eyes that have always pulled him in like gravity and searches desperately for some sign of doubt – for some hope that if he can find the right words they will reach her and keep her anchored to reality, not drowned by the siren song of her own mind. He remembers the woman he met at Dragonstone, small against a jagged throne that rose up behind her like the jaws of a beast about to snap shut, fierce and unbendable as rock until he saw the humanity behind her eyes when he invoked the ghost of her father. He wants to see that woman stirring somewhere behind the murk of this grotesque and terrible certainty. He holds her gaze for as long as he can, trying to give her time to come back to herself.

But with every moment, every coaxing word, he can see her flying too high and far away for him to touch. She can’t hear him, not really. She speaks of the little boy he was as though she is seeing him right in front of her, wounded and hungry for a hand that will lead him towards some purpose greater than himself. Gone for now is the queen who burnt this city and has not shed a tear, and in her place is the lonely little girl who wants to go home.

Daenerys sees what she wants to see.

‘We do it together. We break the wheel together.’

Her voice is strung with all the trappings of a plea, but he knows there is only one answer. This is not a question, but a gorgeous command; a knife wrapped in silk.

‘You are my queen,’ he says hoarsely, the last piece of honesty he can give her. ‘Now, and always.’

She smiles, as lovely as a lie, and kisses closed a door on the last chink of light they had.

Jon cannot keep it open by himself.

He tries to pour as much of the truth into the kiss as he can, so perhaps when she looks back on this moment with different eyes, she will understand that he is sorry.

His hand slowly creeps to the dagger on his belt, nausea roiling in his stomach – at the trust in her eyes that are closed on an enemy, at the hands clinging to him which have killed children. When he brings his weapon up his thumb brushes her cheek accidentally. He can feel her stroking his neck, and tells himself that to wrong her is to right a much larger wrong.

When the hilt strikes her temple, she collapses with not so much as a cry, falling quietly against him. The part of him that can still smell burning flesh wants to shove her away and let her hit the ground. The part of him that loves her wants to hold her for as long as he can. The part of him that swore to protect his people gathers her into his arms and strides away from this empty promise of a room, over the white-capped wreckage to where Drogon awaits.

It had been Jon’s idea to take Daenerys prisoner instead of killing her, and Arya’s to trick Drogon – she had a vial of poison that would induce a deep and unshakeable sleep, which he was quite sure she had made herself but didn’t need confirmed. When Drogon saw Jon running towards him with Daenerys unconscious in his arms, he made a noise of such vulnerable distress that Jon thought at first he understood the truth and felt betrayed, but when he lowered himself to be mounted it was clear that the poor beast had bought into the ruse – his mother was wounded, and Jon was rescuing her.

He had never been able to see the dragons as beautiful the way she did, but there was something not quite human but almost good in the way Drogon held himself so incredibly still while Jon carried his mother awkwardly onto his back; in the steady, concerned gaze of those enormous red eyes that watched him struggle, ready to catch them if they fell. He so clearly loved Daenerys; so clearly recognized and trusted Jon. He knew they were people, somehow different from the livestock he ate or the horses who shivered in his presence.

Did he know that about the thousands he burnt alive just yesterday, or was there some invisible distinction that he and Daenerys understood and Jon just couldn’t see, his Targaryen blood too diluted by Stark?

The moment Jon was stable, Daenerys slumped against him with a rope from his pocket securing her against his belt, Drogon took off in a terrifying swoop of his wings, lifting clouds of ash and snow from the ground. King’s Landing quickly shrunk beneath them, half-buried beneath winter and its own waste.

Jon was in the sky before he heard the first clamouring of soldiers; the urgent steps of the Unsullied rushing to the throne room, their queen vanishing into the sky along with their victory.


	2. step to the right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dany dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have changed the tags to reflect that the endgame will be Jon/Dany, however, Sansa/Jon will still be a factor. If that is a dealbreaker for you, I totally get that, but would prefer you just go find a fic you do like instead of telling me why. I have also tagged that all characters will be grey, so if you can't handle your favourite being criticized, please keep moving.
> 
> That said, thanks to the people who left kind comments!

_Dany is six years old and sitting on a balcony, watching the sun rise over the ocean. She can smell the salt and brine of sea air, hear the gulls arguing over scraps of fish way down by the water’s edge, commonalities in every one of the waterside cities she has visited in a lifetime of travelling. Or, no, that’s not right – she’s only six, and she’s only ever lived in King’s Landing. She is scoffing down a breakfast of fruit, bread and honey as the sky slowly turns from pink to blue like a bruise blooming under skin, and her mother’s fingers work away at her hair, picking at the knots._

_‘Aren’t you finished yet?’ Dany grumbles, around a mouthful of nectarine._

_She hears her mother’s amused snort and giggles, imagining the faces of Rhaella’s admirers if they heard her laugh when she actually thought something was funny._

_‘I would have been finished long ago,’ Rhaella scolded, ‘if you had brushed and braided your hair before sleeping on it, like I’ve told you.’_

_Dany tries to remember being told this, but it’s like peering off the edge of a cliff and finding the ground is so much further than you thought – she expected to rummage through six years of motherly instructions and instead finds herself staring into a bottomless black void, silent and empty. Something is wrong, and fear hits her in a wave that breaks over her in cold sweat; she turns around in her chair, desperate to grab onto her mother and prove that she’s real, that she would never leave Dany alone. She is still just a young girl._

_Her hearts drops right through her stomach when she looks around and sees only herself – the grown up Daenerys Targaryen she has seen before in dreams, or perhaps in mirrors. Beautiful, with smooth glowing skin and the features of a doll, with full pink lips and lashes as long as a child’s. The expression on her face belies the soft beauty; she is all steel and stone, looking on her child self’s fear with an unforgiving gaze, taking her measure and finding her wanting. This woman is not her mother; she is not any mother, and yet when Dany combs back through her memory, she is all she has. No mother, no sister – she has never even seen another woman with the same colour hair as hers._

_‘You are the Mother of Dragons,’ says Daenerys firmly. ‘Not a child.’_

_In the distance, a dragon screeches._

_=_

_The Iron Throne is so much smaller than she had thought; just a chair really, if old and heavy and built on bloodshed. The blackened swords don’t even look that sharp; there are little pockmarks in the hilts from where gems have fallen out. An ugly thing, dark and decaying and utterly out of place for the kind of grand, magnificent throne room Dany means to build. But it looks just right in the burnt out shell of the Red Keep; snow and ash have settled on its edges, making the black seem even blacker._

_Maybe she won’t sit on the Iron Throne after all – she will build something new, something better. A golden throne of woven vines, adorned with fruit and flowers, in a room filled with windows and statues; she imagines marble versions of Jorah and Missandei standing on either side of her, lending her their strength, carved by the realm’s best sculptors with such detail that she will never forget the curves of their faces. If only you could do the same with voices that you could with likenesses, she would fill the room with their words as well, so when she closes her eyes she can pretend…_

_For now though, she stares at the Iron Throne – this impossible bounty, at last within her reach. She swallows as she takes the last few steps towards it, reaching out for the spoils of her victory – but before her hand can close over the pommel of a sword, someone grips her shoulder._

_She spins around, startled, and can barely contain her scream when Viserys grins back at her, his face obscured by the molten gold that drips down his forehead and into his eyes, melting strips into his cheeks like the lines tears make._

_‘Well done, sweet sister,’ he says, and suddenly he is behind her, sitting on the throne that she killed for – she steps towards him, opening her mouth to protest, but before she can get a word out he narrows his eyes._

_‘A crown for a queen,’ he commands, and suddenly her head is covered in liquid gold, so hot that she can feel her skin bubbling, smell her hair burning; she screams as it slides down her face and blinds her, the pain filling her completely, hollowing her out until there is nothing left._

_=_

_In another life, Rhaego is born whole, screaming and alive. She spends the first tender, aching days of his life on a bed of soft pillows in the tent she shares with Drogo, learning the rose-petal softness of his skin, the way his cries hitch in the middle when he is hungry and rasp at the end when he wants to be held. She knows he is the Stallion Who Will Mount the World, but for now he is her own beautiful boy – hers to raise and protect, and she swears she will not let his heart be hardened by war. She had worried that Drogo, so focused on conquest and the might of their blood, might look at him and see only what he might one day be. But when her husband looks at their son, she can see a part of him crack open that calcified when he himself was a little boy, and he runs his finger down Rhaego’s cheek with such tenderness that it seems untrue he is the same man who has ripped people’s tongues from their throats with his own hands. She is relieved to know that he too would trade their khalasar and kingdom to keep him safe._

_She has never been so happy._

_=_

_In another life, Duncan is born in a bakery – she had been walking the streets of Meereen, visiting soldiers’ quarters, when her contractions began in a violent rush and Daario carried her inside the first door they found._

_‘Mhysa!’ cried the baker, looking terrified; she means to give him a comforting look, but thinks she must have simply looked wild, for he cringed and ran for his wife._

_The labour is unbelievably fast; they would never have made it home, even if Daario ran with her in his arms. He is a good person to help with a birth, for all he’s a man – not squeamish around blood or women’s parts, he never shows if he is nervous and even manages to make Dany laugh once through her tears. When Duncan slides into his hands, he brings him up into Dany’s arms straight away._

_‘Your Grace – our son,’ he says, filled with pride, and Dany beams at him. Duncan has such a sweet little face, all the more for the smudge of flour on his cheek and the way he smells of sugar._

_=_

_In another life, Naerys lives for four hours, her heart furiously defying its size to snatch back moments from the lifetime that death has already stolen. Hizdahr wants to hold her, and Dany lets him for a while, hating him every moment and her body for its failure and the whole world. Her daughter was born in a tide of blood, and Dany clutched tightly to consciousness even as her vision blurred and she thought perhaps that the silence was just her ears failing her. She woke after several minutes to Jorah’s sad, gentle eyes and she knew before he told her that she would have to love this baby a whole life’s worth in however long she had her._

_‘My white-haired girl,’ Dany murmurs, kissing the crown of her head again and again, making sure Naerys knows the sound of her mother’s voice. She wonders if her own mother ever called her this; it’s such an unexpected joy to have someone who looks like you in the world. Naerys’ hand is tiny, barely larger than Dany’s thumbnail, but when Dany places her little finger in the curve of her palm, the fingers close._

_‘I will try to be as strong as you, my darling,’ Dany sobs, as Naerys’ grows still against her chest, and for the rest of her days she remembers those tiny fingers gripping at her mother, fighting even when she had no hope._

_=_

_In another life, Elaena is born in the middle of a storm – not a lightning storm, like Dany’s own birth, but a snow storm, the wind howling so loud outside Winterfell’s walls that it feels like they are screaming in solidarity; the snow coming down so thick and hard that you can almost hear it hitting the ground. She sits with her back against Jon’s chest, labouring for over a day as a fire roars in the hearth, coaxing out this longed-for daughter who refuses to come easy. Jon holds her hand the whole time, whispering encouragement and then, as he runs out of things to say, murmuring a song in his low, rumbling voice that seems to make the wind and the snow and the fire just a little more quiet._

_At long, long last Elaena arrives with a high, warbling shriek and a kick to Dany’s thigh; when she is placed into Dany’s arms she doesn’t nuzzle into her but stares with enormous eyes like she has to make sure of something before she accepts this new turn of events. Dany smiles tearfully down at her, and Elaena gives a relieved little snuffle and closes her eyes, falling asleep against Dany’s shoulder as Jon openly weeps._

_‘She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’ he says, his voice choked. ‘You’re a hero.’_

_Dany feels warmth spread through her chest, a feeling that only Jon can give her; the sense that she is both woman and queen, and need not choose, and is loved for it._

_=_

_In every life, she has dragons. They are Rhaego’s fiercest riders, watching him with what she could swear is pride when he rides past, and when he is old enough she takes him flying. Her boy never admits to being afraid, not for a day in his life, but when she sees him fall from Rhaegal’s back, he screams._

_Duncan is so curious about them, even as a baby; while other children are interested but fearful, he toddles towards them on chubby little legs, hugging their snouts and babbling at them until he is old enough to say their names. They come to love him more than Dany, though she doesn’t mind – they would eviscerate anyone who hurt him, and he is surrounded by enemies._

_Dany visits Rhaegal and Viserion after Naerys dies; the children she locked up, to protect other people’s babies. Their gleaming eyes aren’t resentful, but pleading, and she doesn’t stay long._

_Elaena, much to Dany’s surprise and bafflement, is affectionate but somewhat unimpressed by the dragons. She is far more interested in wolves, and next best likes the horses, like her aunt Arya. Dany rides alongside her many a cold day, across the freezing plains, jumping over brooks and laughing as Elaena first trails behind her and soon starts to surge ahead more often than not. She treasures those days, but tries not to show her longing as her dragons circle overhead like loyal sentries, or her hurt._

_She knows her babies are only dreams; in real life, she can’t have them and the dragons both._

_=_

_Her doll breaks apart in her hands, and Dany wails, heartbroken._

_‘Oh, Your Grace…’_

_One of her mother’s ladies, charged with watching the children, kneels down beside her and clucks over the source of her distress – a beautiful porcelain doll with a hand-sewn dress in dove grey velvet and real auburn hair, snapped at the waist._

_‘It’s just a doll,’ says the lady, and Dany is filled with a sense of righteous indignation at the unfairness of adults getting to decide what matters and what doesn’t._

_‘It’s not just a doll,’ she snaps. She taps her finger on the doll’s jaunty little nose, half a scold, and then smooths back her hair. ‘She’s my friend.’_

_‘Well, what happened?’_

_Dany sighs. ‘I was trying to make her bow, like a proper lady does to a queen.’_

_The lady’s mouth twitches. ‘Well, you aren’t a queen just yet. If you are patient, and wait for the proper time, then I’m sure she will bow all you like.’_

_‘It’s too late now,’ says Dany moodily._

_She sniffs disdainfully at Viserys, who has built a miniature city out of little wooden blocks and is using his toy dragon to knock it down, roaring pitifully in the voice of a child much younger than his age. She doesn’t understand why he thinks it’s fun to destroy things._

_=_

_The streets of King’s Landing are not what she’d imagined. Sun-baked stones turned white with ash, there are no chattering merchants or creaking wagon wheels; the only footsteps she can hear are her own, and the silence cries out for voices. She walks slowly through the city, trying to conjure images of the crowds that have always reached for her, wherever she went – for a split second she thinks she hears laughter, and turns with her heart in her throat, desperate – but it’s only a scream, battered by disbelief into a sick echo of mirth. A woman stands over a twisted, blackened pile of bones and shrieks, an animalistic expression of grief that rings out like an awful sort of bell._

_Dany wants to run over and take the woman in her arms – it’s alright, it’s over, you surrendered. I can hear you – the bells are ringing. No need to attack._

_She can’t bear it; she tears her gaze away and keeps walking, on and on through crumbling streets and streets that aren’t there anymore at all. Stepping over bodies and things that might be bodies, but she can’t be sure. With every step she imagines that behind her, rubble rolls up off the ground like water receding into the sea, rebuilding the walls and houses and shops that she has never seen. Occasionally she senses something moving out of the corner of her eye – a piece of charred timber falling finally from its ruined hinge, a scrap of torn cloth blowing in the wind – and instead of turning to check, she lets herself believe that there are people, whole and healthy, moving just beyond where she can see. Not dead, just waiting._

_The last time Dany saw Missandei, she was standing on the walls of King’s Landing with evil at her back and death in front of her, and her last word was permission. But Dany can’t imagine her kind-hearted, gentle friend looking on this destruction with anything but despair. She tries to imagine what Missandei might say, what counsel or words of wisdom she might have – but she has not been able to summon the memory of Missandei’s voice since she lost her head._

_The world is so very loud without it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still totally happy to hear constructive criticism guys, but really don't need to hear how much you hate Sansa, Jon/Sansa etc. I know people do, but maybe you should discuss that amongst yourselves.


	3. home court

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> news spreads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the lovely comments with your thoughts, feedback and advice! i hope you enjoy - please remember, opinions of the characters are not necessarily the author's own.

The first time dragons came to Winterfell, Sansa was standing on the ramparts with the North laid bare around her like a meal, and the sight of those enormous creatures eating up the sky made the air feel thin; she never breathed well again until she saw them leave.

They had seemed an ill omen; Sansa knew she ought to be grateful, for the fire and strength they would turn against the dead. But while Jon’s letters pushed her to believe that Daenerys Targaryen was arriving as a heroic benefactor, every political instinct – and something harder and sharper, the part of her that pulled against its leash when under threat – told her that this would-be queen was forcing open a door with her dragons that she intended to lock.

That what were invited in as shields would easily become weapons turned against their hosts.

Jon looked at Daenerys and saw – well, many things, Sansa suspected. Certain qualities that only a man in love could see; others that were more the product of wishful thinking and a desperate desire to believe there were other good leaders in the world. In fairness to him, she was sure Daenerys was her best self when they were alone together (though that was a problem of its own kind). The stories about her, from most parts, were absolutely wondrous – and perhaps she had really been the woman from those stories, once. Every tale has a root in truth, even if the seed and the flower seem nothing alike.

But when they met for the first time in Winterfell’s courtyard, Jon’s words and the dream conjured from the stories had fallen away to reveal just a woman. The beauty that inspired songs from across the sea told Sansa that men’s estimations could not be entirely trusted; the pristine white coat and exquisitely styled hair, conspicuous among the mud-splattered soldiers and common folk, told her something else.

Neither as damning as the saccharine smile on Daenerys Targaryen’s face as she crossed towards Sansa and told her that the North, and she, were as beautiful as her brother claimed.

It was not just the lie that rankled (as if Jon would ever think to discuss her looks). It was that this woman supposed herself their queen, had ridden through miles of snow and sleet and Northern people, and learned nothing about what was important to them.

That she looked at Sansa, Lady of Winterfell, who had fought for her home and independence and the safety of the North, and saw a pretty little bird in a cage she wanted to keep shut.

The second time Sansa sees a dragon approach, there is no smaller shadow in tow, nor an army swarming beneath, and for a stomach dropping moment, Sansa wonders if Daenerys has come to burn her for exposing the true order of Targaryen inheritance.

She is alone on the ramparts once more, and her heart pounds.

What can she do? There is nowhere she can run that dragon fire could not turn to ash around her, and she cannot allow Winterfell or her people to be burned for her own actions. If she walked outside the gates alone, would that be enough to satisfy? Or would Daenerys demand an audience – make an example of her? Would she stop with Sansa?

Brienne would never allow her to go.

She has taken three steps, not yet sure what she is going to do, when the dragon swoops steeply downward and lands roughly, a spray of snow bursting from the ground. From above, she can see a small dark-headed figure clinging to its neck, and as it straightens, another form is revealed beneath him – utterly still, with a long white braid.

And Sansa runs.

=

No one dares actually leave the gates of Winterfell with the dragon so close; men scramble to find spare livestock, a hurried tactic to keep it docile and distracted. Sansa, Brienne, and eight men at arms cluster together in the narrow archway as Jon walks towards them with Daenerys limp in his arms.

As he grows nearer, Sansa can make out his face and a swell of dread rises up in her chest; he has aged a hundred years, carrying some terrible weight he hadn’t left with, and yet the look on his face reminds her of the young boy he had once been, shrinking around Winterfell with a shamed expression like he was afraid that any moment he might be asked to leave.

She means to say something comforting (Are you alright? What happened? I’m so glad to see you safe) but what comes out is, ‘Is she dead?’

Jon’s eyes had been fixated on the line of Daenery’s throat, pale and vulnerable with her head tipped back on his arm. They snap up.

‘She’s drugged,’ he says. His voice is so low he may as well be speaking underwater. ‘And she needs to stay that way.’

Mind reeling, Sansa nods to the man beside her, who hauls the man beside him forward. They reach for Daenerys, to take her from Jon’s arms, but he falters, uncertain; his grip on her tightens.

Something is wrong with him; perhaps he is in shock.

‘Jon,’ says Sansa gently. ‘They will take her to the Maester.’

‘She has a head wound,’ he says, dazed. ‘And she needs to remain unconscious.’

‘Of course –‘

‘I have the poison in my pocket.’

Brienne’s sharp intake of breath truncates the silence as every person in the vicinity freezes. The men who had reached for Daenerys take a quick step back, as if touching her might paint them with some dangerous brush.

Sansa stares at Jon. The despair in his eyes is bottomless, and he looks back at her with such pained resignation that she understands, in a great swoop of realization, that what she had considered inevitable and he had insisted was impossible has happened.

Daenerys is not their ally any longer.

=

There is hardly anyone left in Winterfell, but Sansa, Brienne, Bran and Lord Royce gather in her chambers to hear Jon’s account.

It is the stuff of nightmares.

Sansa has always believed Daenerys is dangerous. Always argued that she held liberation hostage to admiration and obedience. Everyone knew she was violent. But despite Sansa’s unwavering stance on the future of the North, she knew that Daenerys believed herself to be good. Having known the cruelty of a tyrant like Cersei, who knew and embraced her true place on the spectrum of morality and held herself to no higher standard than self-interest, Sansa thought the lies Daenerys told herself would at least prevent her from the mass murder of innocents. Would force her to at least maintain an appearance of listening to outside council.

Jon is haunted as he describes the slaughter – never a wordsmith, his empty eyes and wrecked voice are enough.

‘I tried to make her see what she’d done,’ he says hopelessly. ‘It was like I was speaking a different language. She’d crossed some line I – I couldn’t bring her back from.’

Brienne makes a choked, anguished sound and Sansa reaches out to squeeze her arm. Jaime Lannister’s death had been a spectre over the past few days – half-expected, to have it confirmed was still a devastating blow for her.

‘Where is Arya?’ asks Sansa. Her mind casts a desperate net over the people left to her, trying to imagine how they are possibly going to survive what lies ahead of them.

Jon swallows. ‘She started riding here before… before I went to speak to the queen. She’ll be well ahead of the Targaryen forces. My own men were warned as well. There will be some casualties… but at least some of them were able to leave.’

‘Excellent. We can all die together once they arrive,’ growls Lord Royce. Sansa looks at him sharply.

‘We’re not going to die.’

‘We have a hostage,’ Brienne points out. Jon bows his head, miserable.

‘What of the dragon?’ asks Royce. ‘I’m surprised we haven’t been roasted already.’

‘Drogon trusts me,’ says Jon. ‘He thought I was rescuing Dany. As long as she’s unconscious, he won’t know any different from her.’

‘He might figure it out once his friends the Dothraki and Unsullied show up and start shooting at us.’

‘How intelligent are they?’ poses Brienne. ‘Would he understand – I suppose it’s a stupid question, but can we threaten a dragon with his mother’s safety?’

‘The moment he understands we are a threat, he’ll kill us all,’ says Jon bluntly.

‘Perhaps we ought to kill him first. He’s a dragon, Your Grace – there is no course we can take which will guarantee our safety unless he is dead.’

‘Daenerys kept two of her dragons locked up for years, did she not?’ asks Sansa. ‘It’s possible to confine them. And the dragon is a valuable hostage in itself.’

She notices with irritation that Jon is steadfastly refusing to meet her eyes whenever she speaks, instead staring at his feet.

‘Those dragons were smaller,’ Jon says. ‘This one is the strongest, and it has never been imprisoned. And we don’t have a pyramid to use as a cage.’

‘I can warg into him,’ interjects Bran.

They stop and look at him; Bran gazes back with that chilling calm that has saved them so many times, and yet still feels to Sansa like ice water down the back of her neck; something ancient and indifferent peering out through the eyes of her little brother. She imagines what Bran, the real Bran, would think of this – what his heart might feel if it were not buried between thousands of years and infinite memories. She imagines him sitting next to Jon, hand on his shoulder – he was always so kind, when she knew him, and though the worst grief for who he once was has receded, she feels a violent pang of sadness at what is absent in his eyes.

‘Are you certain?’ she asks, as a lady does to her advisor.

‘It would not be the first time the three eyed raven has warged into the body of a dragon.’

‘We don’t know how long you might need to remain there.’ They could care for Bran’s body, if it came to that – but she does not know enough about warging to know if it is safe for his mind, to live indefinitely inside a dragon, or how firm his control would be. She doesn’t entirely trust Bran to tell the truth about it, either.

‘While I do, build something that will restrain him, if we need to. I am sure I can keep him under control until then.’

‘And what of her armies?’ Brienne pipes up. She is looking a little less overwhelmed than she had upon first realizing they were likely in the midst of another war, but from the apprehension on her face, Sansa can tell she knows, having fought alongside them, exactly what faces them if they meet the Targaryen forces in out and out battle, and does not relish the thought.

‘They will have no choice but to refrain from attacking, at least for now. They will know she’s here, but not where. If they breach our walls, we kill her, and everything they’ve done is for nothing. We use that time to make a case to our allies. I have to believe there are others who won’t want her on the throne after what she has done.’

There is silence as Sansa’s words sink in.

It is a conversation, like so many recently, with unspoken tensions both hidden and expressed through the language of statecraft. She knows what she is saying, underneath it all, and to whom – _This is the queen you gave us, because you wouldn’t listen to me. Because you loved her._

Jon, as ever, is more opaque. It’s clear he’s devastated – not just over the human cost of Daenerys’s conquest, but the things destroyed between them as well. Sansa feels sorry for him, truly – but she is also furious, and righteous, and hates them both a little for it.

=

There will be days and weeks in which plans can be made – strategy on strategy to be piled up on top of each other until the weight is crushing. There is only so much that can be done while they wait for Daenerys’s armies to arrive. Bran goes to his solar to prepare for what must be done; Brienne and Lord Royce go to their men, beginning the work of yet another battle. And then there are only two.

Jon wrestles with the wrongness of what they are doing; of the ready and willingness of his comrades, his sister, to kill the woman who until today was their queen.

Dany’s body is not in the room, but it is a presence all the same – proof of something, although his thoughts are still far too wild to determine what. He keeps seeing her trusting expression, the remnants of joy on her face as she kissed him, and wants to crawl out of his own skin.

He keeps seeing burning children.

‘You know what might need to be done,’ says Sansa eventually. Her expression is as remote as ever, but her eyes as not as hard as they sometimes are. ‘You must have known that when you brought her here.’

‘She doesn’t deserve to die, Sansa,’ says Jon hoarsely. ‘You don’t know – you didn’t see her, in those last days. She was heartbroken –‘

‘I don’t care,’ says Sansa flatly, casually bypassing so many things he has wished she would try to understand. ‘We’ve all been heartbroken. We’ve all lost people we loved. There is no amount of suffering that excuses what she did.’

This is an inescapable truth, and Jon has tried hard to escape it. As terribly as he feels for Dany, he feels more for the victims of the expression of her pain than he does for her pain itself.

As much as she deserves his empathy, she deserves other things as well.

‘Not excuses, no –‘

‘And do not lie to me and pretend you are defending her from some morally defensible position.’ There is a scraped rawness to Sansa’s voice that makes Jon want to forgive her for what she is saying. And yet. ‘You want her alive because you love her. Everything you’ve done since you went to Dragonstone has been because –‘

‘That’s not true,’ he snaps. ‘I told you about my true lineage despite her begging me not to.’

Sansa flinches as he veers close to the wound between them.

‘I kidnapped her from the foot of that damn throne, destroying her life’s work and risking war. I did that because I love _you.’_

His anger, which had made his outburst jagged in the beginning, softens.

He is angry with Sansa. He’s been angry with her for months. He resented her belligerence with Dany, her refusal to entertain any notion for the future that didn’t keep the North under their sole control, when he felt with such bone deep certainty that there were other safe hands. His hurt over her choice to betray their vow in the godswood is like a broken rib; it stings every time he remembers it, and aches even when he manages to think of something else.

She has not been able to look at him without disappointment for so long that he has been telling himself her perspective is too clouded by fear and judgment to be trusted. Daenerys was their queen, and would prove a good one, and when Sansa was not so afraid anymore, she would understand everything he’d done.

But the truth which emerged was not what he had expected.

It does not make the anger go away, but it tempers it. He betrayed Daenerys to protect Sansa and Arya – not just them, but them first.

The love he feels for them is the only thing that makes him believe that love is not just the surest path to destruction.

Sansa is visibly affected by his words; it always makes his heart clench a bit, when she peers around that icy exterior of hers. Glassy-eyed, she walks forward and takes his hand – smaller than his, but right now, far stronger - holding his gaze steady.

‘We won’t kill her unless we have to, Jon,’ she says quietly. ‘It would leave us with little protection. But if we have to, I will give the order.’

He hears what is unspoken – if it comes to that, I won’t make you do it. Because I love _you._

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know if this fic is going to be anyone's cup of tea, but i love my three central characters (dany, jon and sansa) and while this fic's premise requires a fairly open acceptance of canon and a critical examination of everyone, no one is all bad or all good. i'm open to constructive criticism and dissenting opinions on the characters, but if your critique is a fundamental problem with the premise... maybe think about it first.


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